World: r3wp

he says that it's true that Sugar (their UI) is very slow though. 
he says the reasons are python and cairo.

the initial version of the machine was not powerful enough to run 
Sugar. they have bumped the specs for that reason, not to support 
WinXP. also, bumping the specs did not change the price much (a few 
dollars). basicaly, the $100 figure was Negroponte's dream, but he's 
not an engineer. in reality, the laptop never really costed $100.

also, he tells me to beware of some news sources. for example, olpcnews.com 
is owned by an Intel employer. there are a lot of people spreading 
FUD about the project.

even if it's slow, the laptop works *very* well for childrens. they 
learn a lot from it. and one OLPC is stil faster than no laptop at 
all.

gabriele, it's of course against their GPL philosophy, but did you 
talk about REBOL?

(it's a shame REBOL and OLPC don't fit together philosophically)

Thanks for fighting some of the FUD Gabriele.  When are you going 
to publish "The World According to Santilli; Truth trumps Treachery"? 
 ;)

We should offer them R3 View then :-) "Cairo sucks" is my general 
reaction, even if it might not be true ... just to provoke guys a 
bit :-)

Gab, cool dump of info, thanks...  we agree, the OLPC will simply 
get cheaper, faster, and...better, we have to start somewhere...

I don't understand the OLPC project.  9.7M kids die each year under 
the age of 5 ( 50% of them in sub Saharan Africa ), and there's this 
crazy project to give the survivors laptops.  There is little educational 
evidence that computers increase educational outcomes in schools.

I think that someone's world view has to change once they see the 
world through the lens of the WWW. For the better, to feel part of 
a 'smaller', more social world. For the worse (and in the end for 
the better), to see how much worse off you are compared to others 
due to international neglect from rich nations towards the poor ones, 
political corruption, etc. - the pain at the realization of this 
being the catalyst for change. So, it's not strictly about improving 
your ABC's.

What a cool reward!  You've survived a dozen childhood ailments, 
dysentery,  malaria, starvation…and here is a shiny new plastic thing.


 There is little educational evidence that computers increase educational 
 outcomes in schools.

There is little evidence there is little evidence.


We have no idea what the impact of these computers in that environment 
is going to be…lets all be very quiet and not judge for about 20 
years…

I suspect it will help the childrens children

Sure ... a billion Chinese want to have the same shiny tools as those 
in the USA as seen on the WWW, and this is leading to environmental 
disaster in China.

Tomc, who knows what the life of these OLPCs are ... most PCs don't 
last 5 years.

but as the Jesuits say "give me the child and i will give you the 
man"

I thought the Jesuits only spoke in Latin

Graham;  OLPC may, in some small part be a guilt relief mechanism, 
but so?  So is CARE, CCF, and many many other relief organizations. 
 I think these organizations may, in the end, be of less impact than 
OLPC.  I don't think the XO's are meant to be fish, they are meant 
to teach fishing ... not even necessarily the ABCs.   Even if the 
impact is sub-optimal, people should still try.  The world's wealth 
and opportunities may be spread out unfairly, but I'm pretty sure 
IQ is spread out evenly.  Let's give it a chance.  Who knows, the 
feedback loop may eventually even seep back to British Columbia and 
we Canadians may start to rethink clear-cut logging.  The whole butterfly 
fart aspect of Chaos Theory thing.

not the ones I met

One of the more interesting, and probably more practical, aid programmes 
I've come across is Oportunity International ( http://www.opportunity.org.au
) which provides micro-loans to poor people wanting to start a business.

the one I am familar with over this way is http://www.kiva.org/

Henrik, obviously, i told him long ago, and his answer was "it's 
not open source". :) i told him again this time, that if they had 
used rebol, it would not be that slow, "but it's not open source" 
;) now i wonder how many python bugs they fixed.

there is one thing we could do though, which is to buy one laptop, 
and start making our own clone of their ui with rebol, and then show 
them how much better it is. :)

Graham, the thing is, if just .1% of them learns how to program, 
they can earn a lot of money and eventually start changing things. 
if we keep them out of the digital world, they will never be on par 
with us here.

good idea towards mimicking their UI using VID3! :-)

Gabriele, "but it's not open source". That's the default answer you'll 
get, but I would think it's more "but it's not GPL". Even if it were 
fully open under a BSD license, it would still not be good enough. 
If they were interested in BSD software, they wouldn't respond that 
way.

I guess having a technical advantage is not a factor with GPL software.

i don't know. anyway, my friend says that most of the people there 
are python zealots, and would not accept anything else. (he doesn't 
personally  like python.)

huh ... but did they built OLPC for children out there, or for the 
Python zealots?

pekr, good point. :-) I don't think they can be impartial to the 
language used. I wonder what they would do if Python wasn't open 
source.

they should put a machine code monitor in there too, for computer 
science classes.

i think, that many developers in the project are volunteers (my friend 
is), so i guess they got to pick the language they wanted :)

I wonder why they chose that over Ruby. Perhaps Ruby is really hyped 
too much.

probably python has more bindings (to gtk, cairo, and so on)

or maybe it's just because the head developer was a python zealot, 
i don't know. i haven't asked.

:-)

Graham, but is it the same people? I read a lot about how starving 
people in clay huts have no use for laptops, but when I read about 
it on Wikipedia, it's not targeted at these people, but people who 
already have enough infrastructure to support this. When I look at 
the pictures of kids with OLPCs, they don't live in clay huts or 
are starving.

Yes, Python has something like list of 10 - 15 bindings to various 
UIs. Ruby is close though. But for me Python is more readable. Of 
course I would prefer REBOL, but that's me, REBOL zealot.

and if you want to turn the situation around in those places, education 
is key and a laptop is a good step, but it's only one small part 
of it. it's just getting so much attention that people think it's 
the only step that will be taken.

I just wonder if they will keep selling the machine to us as well. 
Looking at the machine boot, it doesn't look all that slow. It would 
make for a nice little server.

we can be clever enough too. if VID3 is nice, it can get used by 
those children for educational purposes anyway, no matter what their 
UI is written in primarily :-)

if anything, it would be a nice tech demo. demonstrate how much software 
can be packed onto an OLPC, if it's all written in REBOL.

Formula for Milking the Digital Divide

http://www.deeshaa.org/2005/11/05/formula-for-milking-the-digital-divide/

Henrik: The problem is not hardware or how much software.

Schools need soft for teaching-learning, designed on pedagogical 
principles. Cmap Tools is an excellent example. (50 Mb of java)
What about an rebol version ? (3Flex is a good basis)

As Gabriele pointed out; OLPC information is full of FUD.  The "good 
guys" just want to provide a leg-up to some children.  The "bad guys" 
seem threatened and will use money and misinformation as they smile 
and nod and pretend to help.  ;)  It is better to stay overtly positive 
to fight the misinformation imho.  So in that vein; OLPC and the 
XO is perfect.  All decisions are the very best and could not be 
made any better.  :)

And we all should say "Yay OLPC" once per hour in a crowded place!

or team up and go door to door ...

Gabriele, I don't think that argument stands.  So, even if .1% learn 
to program and make some money, there is still the lost opportunity 
to save lives and enrich them in more basic ways.

People don't need to learn to program at a very early age ( I presume 
the XO is aimed at young children ).

Education would be better served with some clean water, food and 
a teacher.